D’oh! :o
Interestingly enough, a substantial amount of the illicit firearms in Mexico originate in the US.
Not to hijack too much, but this is the model in theory. In practice, as the UK is (very slowly) discovering, the private company that wins the contract is (naturally) the one with the lowest bid. This is always lower than the government study into how much it would cost with public money, so the company gets the contract. Then, after a few months, it transpires that the private company needs extra cash for “unforeseen costs” or whatever. In reality, the original bid was unrealistic. Not only that, but more often than not the project is late, and cocked up even then. The whole charade ends up costing more than it would have if it had been publicly funded to start with, and what’s more the government bears all the risk while the private company makes all the profits. It is an abomination and should be discarded ASAP, IMHO. /hijack
I think the quickest and cheapest way to do this is not to keep the illegals from coming in, but keep them from wanting to come here.
The vast majority are crossing because Mexico has a corrupt government and the economic opportunities do not exist. I do not believe we have this same problem at the Canadian border, since Canada has a stable government and you can get a job there.
Grow the Mexican economy, get an honest government, and there will be no need for the illegals to come here. They will be able to stay home and prosper.
Don’t forget to crack down on the folks inside the US who are hiring them, too. Somebody is providing the carrot in the scenario, after all.
These two concepts contradict each other. The more capital, manufacturing and trade are free to move from country to country, the worse things become for the laborers, who aren’t nearly as free to follow.
In other words, the more free trade we have, the more people will try to cross borders to follow the jobs, or to flee somewhere the jobs have left.
Bingo. The fence is a silly feel-good measure and it’ll be breached in a matter of days, anyway. The people who want to get through have numbers, smarts and persistence, and that’ll make most fences useless. East Germany didn’t build their high-tech Todeszone along the border because they didn’t have anything better to do with their cash, they did so because that sort of measure is necessary if you want to stop people who are determined. If you’re not willing to back up the fence with force - and that pretty much means deadly force - it’s ornamental. Now, are we at the point where we’re cool with National Guradsmen opening fire on families crossing the border ? I should hope not.
Do it the hard way and go for the money. Find and prosecute the upstanding American citizens who who hire illegals. Confiscate their earnings. (Throw them in jail, too, for good measure. But hit them in the wallet first and foremost.) If the job market dries out, the illegal border traffic does, too.
This is quickly heading toward GD. I live in San Diego, so I am somewhat close to this issue (no pun intended). And have also travelled to places in Mexico and central America. As to:
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What’s so fucked about Mexico that people are willing to risk death to get to the US?
I think specifics aren’t all that important, but what is significant that people ARE willing to risk everything to come to the US. Simply put: they have nothing to lose by trying, and are willing to risk their lives at a chance for a better life. WHAT the reasons are, are less important than the fact that things ARE fucked up, and it is well worth the risk to try to “trade up”.
One thing to consider is that a lot of illegals that cross the border didn’t start in Mexico. A common site here in San Diego are the “day workers”, and I was surprized to find that most are from Guatemala - by way of Mexico. They actually have a spanish-to-whatever-indian-Guatemalan-language-necessary translator to help these guys get day jobs.
But the bottom line about what’s so fucked up is simple: poverty. Rampant. And has been for generations.
If this question is really another way of asking “why don’t they just stay where they are ?”, it is because it is being asked by someone who has a solid roof over his head, eats 3 squares a day, doesn’t worry about where the next day’s pay is going to come from, if at all. Basically it is a question being asked by someone who can’t relate to how shitty these peoples’ lives are. -
Why isn’t anyone outraged at Mexico? Why is the US accepting illegal immigrants the only solution deemed moral and righteous?
Ever hear of “habitat for humanity” (Jimmy Carter helping build homes) ? People are “appalled” by conditions, and there are a number of organizations that provide aide. Mexico isn’t the only really poor country around - they just happen to border the US. I think these organizations and efforts would certainly fall into the “moral and righteous” category. -
Why is the Mexican government, instead of solving its own problems, publicly trying to get the US to solve them?
“Instead” ??? !!! You honestly believe the Mexican government isn’t doing ANYTHING to help its own people ? Start with “along with attempting to solve its own problems…” for a change.
The fact is the problems are big. They are not the kind of thing that can be solved quickly or easily. I had a real eye-opener working with an adult literacy student I was tutoring. She, herself, was an illegal that was now in the process of becoming legal. (She was the one who explained about the Guatemalans, BTW). In her returns to her hometown, after having lived in the US, was shocked and disgusted by how ingrained the corruption was. Basic things like utilities (whether you got reliable electricity) was all a matter of “who you knew”. The list was long. But what I didn’t have a sense of, was how “normal” it had become for these people to live in this manner - they did not see the harm, the unfairness, etc… So though it is pretty well known that things like corruption extends through all levels, it is not an easy thing to change. -
Why should we accept illegal immigrants from Mexico when we sent Elian Gonzales back to Cuba, which is in far worse shape?
First, I think whether Cuba or Mexico is in worse shape than the other is highly debatable. Second, as pointed out above, many don’t originate from Mexico, many are just passing through. And many of those places ARE in worse shape than Cuba.
But more to your question, so if a place is “bad enough” it WOULD be acceptable to accept illegal immigrants from there ? Just what is the criteria ?
There’s a certain hipocrisy to this, but hipocrisy is not confined to one issue or one political grouping, there’s lots to go around.
Here we have a government that is prepared to spend money and lives on an invasion to impose freedom and democracy, and yet is not interested in the welfare and conditions of people living near its own borders and who would certainly benefit from freedom and democracy.
US businesses have benefitted for generations from the cheap labour that illegals provide, and their status ensures that illegals will always end up with low pay and usually poor working conditions, which helps those profit margins hugely.
At the same time, there are plenty of wealthy folks who make noises about illegals and yet benefit directly from their presence.
It’s actually not in the interests of many US businesses to have the illegals ‘problem’ solved by either removing them or preventing them from coming in, to say the situation is schizophrenic would be an exaggeration, though this is how it appears on the surface.
What you have are differing groups that have differant issues with illegal immigration, with a significant number of those who have an interest both in keeping them out, and all the while making money out of them.
I too am against putting up barriers that don’t work. Instead, I want barriers that DO work. That will be the BEST way to make sure that illegals don’t die on our soil. The Mexican government will then have to do something about all the dead bodies out in THEIR desert. I don’t think that they will be putting Agua out there for them either or doing anything about them at all.
There is a good fence design that the Isrealis have done which DOES keep out trained terrorists, so I think that it should do even better against untrained illegals. It is a four fence design with concertina wire with razor wire on both sides with a ditch and two rows of fencing constructed with razor wire on top and a patrol road down the middle. I think it will be highly effective, and even it is breached, it will take a good bit of time, and the BP can easily respond and stop the illegals, terrorists, and drug smugglers.
The US Army built the Alcan highway in EIGHT months during WWII and through a LOT worse terrain and conditions than anything found on the southern border. It is roughly the same length as the border with Mexico, a little shorter perhaps. I think that if our parents generation could do it, we should be able to do the same.
As for the question of the northern border not being secured because Canadians look the same as us, I find that absurd. The reason we don’t pay as much attention is because there is NOT THE MAGNITUDE of the problem that we have in the south. If Canadians were coming across at 1 million per year, I can assure you, THAT would get our attention as well.
The thing is, Canadians who come to the US (of which I am one), do so legally. In most cases I have found they’ve come for pretty huge financial gain, if not for marriage. A girlfriend of mine came to the US from Canada for a nearly six-figure income, where at home she made somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3/4 that. In order to come for that sort of incentive, you MUST come legally. You can’t just wander across the border and take a job at that level without papers.
Most people who just want a job can find one in Canada. They don’t need to cross the border for employment, and then don’t have to deal with the expense of moving and the trouble of ducking the law for the remainder of their lives.
Marriage: it’s a giant pain in the ass to go through all of the immigration requirements in order to marry an American, but it’s much more difficult to marry and then try to get legal. I’ve seen both (I came on a fiancee visa) and even though it was a real trial and quite an expense, I wouldn’t trade with the other way for a million dollars.
I’m pretty sure this was meant as a joke, but for anybody reading this thread who doesn’t know, Elian Gonzales was sent back to Cuba because his father in Cuba wanted him back. Not because he entered the US illegally or because Cuba is in worse shape than Mexico, whatever that might have to do with anything.
No, you’re wrong. I’m completely serious. But I don’t think your response is, seeing how fathers in the US are much less likely to get custody of their children.
Wrong. Unless we get down to specifics, there’s no way the problems will be solved.
Hmm, ad hominem and straw man. Those are invalid arguments and don’t disprove the original statement. They do usually show that the attacker does not have a real argument. In addition, that still does not solve the problem.
Yes, I have heard about “Habitat for Humanity”. Obviously all those efforts are a drop in the bucket so far.
Allow me to withdraw that and revise it to say “Why is the Mexican government, instead of making mere token efforts to solve its own problems, publicly trying to get the US to solve them?” When the corrupt president of Mexico tries to get the US to accept more illegal aliens, that says to me what they’re doing is negligible.
I’m well aware their problems are big. This is not an excuse. Allowing illegal aliens is the quick and easy fix.
No, that seems to be what liberals have decided: Mexico is bad enough, but repressive, Communist Cuba is not.
Why does it even matter if illegal immigrants are forced to cross more dangerous terrain or if more die in the process? Why should we make it easier for people to break the law? Should we prohibit homeowners from building walls aroung their homes becuase thieves might climb said wall and fall and injur themselves?
If you read the whole poem, it mentions the FACT that neither of them has cows, livestock, crops that need to be protected or other reasons for the fencing. Presumbably, if either one had such things, a GOOD FENCE WOULD make good neighbors. Given the FACT that we have close to one million illegals crossing our borders destroying property, killing some border residents, assualting them, stealing from them, and other such fun things, I would assume that FROST would be at the FOREFRONT of erecting such a fence to make a good neighbor out of his.
[QUOTE=js_ I, for example, acknowledge that some forms of immigration are illegal; however, I’ve yet to hear one compelling argument as to why the place of one’s birth should limit one’s opportunities. It’s stupid that I cannot move to Ireland and get a job because I’m an American, so it’s stupid to prevent Mexicans from coming into the U.S. for residency and employment. Since I find the law to be indefinsible, it’s more than reasonable to assert that those breaking it should not face increased risk in doing so.[/QUOTE]
I see that the writer has never gone to college. he should also see no reason why a person born in one state should get a tuition break as opposed to one who was born in another one. Or perhaps, if I am willing to move to Cambridge MA and am willing to pay the tuition that I should be admitted to Harvard or MIT and that they unfairly limit MY choices in life by keeping me out. There are thousands of such examples of discrimination which by some points of view are not valid.
The fact of all economic life is that of scarcity. If we lived in a utopia with all resources exactly the same in all parts of the world, then indeed such discrimination based on nationality would make little sense and probably would not exist in any case.
I lived in McAllen TX for many years, and my now wife, was denied cancer treatment because her business had gone bankrupt, and she had NO health insurance. The county had spent and budgeted all of its money for taking care of indigent Mexicans who flooded the medical facilities there. Despite having paid a good chuck of taxes for over 25 years and employed many people at good wages for that period WITH health insurance, SHE was denied care because she had fallen on hard times. THAT is the reason for denying people the so called right to take what they did nothing to create, but based on need.
What’s so abhorrent about someone walking into the USA from Mexico, that it should be against the laws?
What’s so abhorrent about someone walking into your home, that it should be against the laws?
Was there a time in history when a wall prevented people from living where they wanted and how they wanted? Did people die trying to cross that wall?
Didn’t an American President declare that wall A Bad Thing and that it should come down?
Didn’t America (and the world) rejoice when that wall came down?
Do walls only count in other places?
The United States isn’t an opressive dictatorship that’s hell-bent on keeping it’s citizens from escaping. The Berlin wall was meant to keep people in, not out.